September 2007

September 30, 2007

I was just reading this long paper (linked at page) by the folks at PIMCO advocating ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate policy) in the US.. The idea is that Zero interest rates coupled with higher taxes and reduced government spending would somehow dissuade competing mercantilistic reserve banks/nations from subsidizing the US consumer and gaming their own currencies.. This would help to strengthen the long term US manufacturing base and real economy.. my favorite quote (and I've heard it before in Bill Gross' "Outlooks") was that "America needs more engineers and less Realtors"

If this comes to pass it will significantly devalue the US Dollar. That will drive all things valued in dollars higher. Everyone will be a millionaire.. there will be wayyyy more billionaires, a few Trillionaires and it will take 20 bucks to buy a big mac. Taxes will be much higher to discourage asset re-inflation (bubbles) and speculation to new unheard of levels.

On the flip side of that you have a world economy becoming more information driven.. This story spotted by Josh in Ron Jackson's"Lowdown" today features a quote by Laura Desmond of Starcom/Mediavest which suggests that: "a day could come when up to 60% of clients' budgets are apportioned for what's now still known as new media" (The Internet)

I agree with both underlying premises (weaker dollar/stronger internet) so you'll see why I believe that domain names are going to be worth much much more in 10 years time.

Some retail-registrars may be taking their registrants for a ride, forcing renewal payments and then not refunding those payments after outbound transfer (although the central-registry provides a credit afterward).

Quote: "The special circumstances are as follows: The domain is past expiration, the owner renews the domain at the current registrar, the owner then transfers away with in 45 days of the anniversary of the creation date... Do not renew you domain at your old registrar during the grace period and then transfer out. Instead, directly transfer out or pay your renewal fee, wait until day 46 after the old expiration and then transfer out. You will loose one year of registration if you pay first then leave."

I can smell the class-action coming. :)

Another alternative is to pay your renewals far in advance to avoid ever having to deal with the issues surrounding this sort of thing.. I always top up my gas tank in advance.. Never wait till you're below a quarter tank before filling up and you'll never be walking to the gas station with a jerry-can.

Terrific observation on Jay Westerdal's blog though... his posts just get better and better.

also it should be trivial for you to move your blog to FrankSchilling.com or SevenMile.com but the longer you wait to change it the more it will hurt if you ever decide to.""

***FS*** Thanks Aaron! You and others who have advised me on this are absolutely correct.. When I started my blog I had no idea where it would go or that people would actually read it. I just thought I'd play around with it and publish a few tidbits for even fewer folks. Flash-forward to today and I should have anchored it to a URL of my own. I don't plan on ever making money "from" my blog so I've perceived less of an urgency to switch ... but "People"? A magazine which makes its money from publishing?.. It should know better than to anchor to a Wordpress URL.

""Zillow- nope that's not it .. It's that they do not use "house values" as keyword copy.. That they don't match the other words ..That they use cutesy invented words like zestimate rather then plain english that explains what they do. I could fix this in a NY Minute- do it every day- took a long time to learn. That said, having a press release about knowing the value of your home and staying informed which is not branded zillow but goes to a generic url can get to the top as well and Zillow is irrelevant until they get to the page. Too many companies waste the limited word count that compels a click by talking about themselves and their buzz words rather than make an offer that a customer cares about.

Every Google listing should be a like a classified ad. They need to be rigged that way. It takes seo copy skill which is very different from all the metatags, text anchors and other techy things seo experts think matters more. I do this with PDF docs on a server that has no facing content. Has nothing to do with HTML.""

So I got to thinking about Google, Domains, Traffic, Zillow and companies like theirs. Companies which build wonderful platforms, which exert great collective energy to create a mousetrap, a service, a website.. Zillow has "the buzz" and "press zest" because the site was conjured up by Rich Barton, the former Microsoft executive who created Expedia.. That site became a big hit. I think Rich and his team will do it again with Zillow, but had they acquired a large bucket of generic real estate domain names for $50 or 100 million, they would have placed their company in a much stronger lifetime position. Why?.. because they would have made it harder for others to bid for traffic at Google, Yahoo and MSN. Why is that? It has to do with the traffic cycle and eco system.

There are only so many generic intent domain names with type-in traffic. Names like SarasotaRealEstate.com, HouseHunting.com or HomeAppraisal.com. Anyone can own these names and use them as they see fit. These names deliver high quality type-in-traffic which comes for the descriptive nature of the words which make up the name. Buy one of these names and you get 20 or 30 visits a day. Work to acquire 10,000 generic names like this and you sit on a gusher of 6million to 9million targeted unique visits a month!

In today's traffic ecosystem the majority of generic keyword style domain names are marshaled by hundreds of middlemen, parking companies, redistributors, subsyndicators etc.. and all this fancy plumbing leads domain name traffic back to the two dominant keyword marketplaces at Yahoo and Google where that traffic is sold to sites like Zillow on a per-click basis. Had Zillow bought "the cow" in the form of thousands of generic domain names, they upset that eco-system by removing supply from the marketplaces. Point SarasotaRealEstate.com to Zillow and that traffic is no longer available for Trulia to bid on at Yahoo.. You could argue that every time a high quality domain name gets sold and developed or redirected to another existing site that the price for the remaining traffic quietly goes up.

That is one of the reasons I babble about buying a generic defensible type in traffic domain name to compliment your brand. It reduces your lifetime traffic acquisition and marketing costs.

It isn't practical for every start-up to spend $50mm buying buckets of high quality domain names of course.. But if you were sure you had a hit on your hands and if you had the grand-master like foresight to think eight steps ahead of your peers, it would help seal your success and make it harder for others to follow in your wake if you did.

September 28, 2007

***FS*** This rhymes with the .london, .berlin proposals - Other city states would surely love to get their own unique pocket of the net too. Unfortunately it doesn't work neatly for every locale because .LA (one of my favorite towns) is a CCTLD for the Country Laos in South-east Asia. Other city's logical extensions are similarly unavailable. Still it would help to spread the type-in effect by creating a logical geographic extension that people might naturally navigate to depending on where they are located.. Here's to hoping these come to be one day.

He's one of the more prominent SEO bloggers and internet developers who has spent a lot of time evangelizing domain names. ""

***FS*** I hadn't seen this but this guy clearly gets it and positively naiols each point. It's nice to read somebody so clearly articulate (in text) the kind of thoughts which are running through my mind. Our acquaintance Calvin Ayre of Bodog fame could learn something about brand marketing in point #4. I would add that the more premium generic names you acquire, the lower your lifetime marketing costs for your core-brand are going to be. Point number 5 is a gem. Priceless stuff

Rubix Cubes and Merry Go Rounds ... I just love these two analogies. ..Great post.

Quote:""Having a billion at age 90 does not have the same value as a few million at age 30. The sweet spot of life is what it is all about. My sweet spot is passing quickly. lol. ""

I've thought a lot about the time value of money and quality of life over the last few months. My extended summer vacation gave me a great opportunity to experience what life would be like if I had no responsibilities.. no blogging, no decisions aside from whether to have the chocolate biscotti or the bluberry scone with my latte at the Starbucks.. Will I bike or rollerblade around the park today? Where do the kids want to go?

I can't think of another business that allows you the latitude to truly "Live Life" like the domain business does.

Take you're average 90 year old billionaire and he or she (if they haven't made it through inheritance) has made a faustian bargain.. they have traded their time away for money.. Domain registrants don't have to make that bargain. You get to decide how hard to work, how to live, but you don't need to work in order to live.

I've had more than one acquaintance who has never dabbled in the domain space, recently start acquiring names for value .. 20k, 40k in order to start their million dollar business. This is new outside money coming in to build small sites for cashflow.

It's not too late to get those names yourself and to hold them until they naturally increase in value or until you decide to build them out yourself. The price of entry to the merry-go-round has changed.. But it's still affordable when compared with bricks and mortar opportunities... and you don't have to sacrifice 'quality of life' to do it.